Rabu, 30 Juli 2008

Sell a Business Successfully!

The decision to sell a business is a hard one to come to. You have probably invested a lot of time and energy into your business to make it successful but now is the time to move on. Maybe you want to do something different, you are retiring or just see different market trends and now it is time to sell. Maybe you still wrestle with the decision to sell a business - maybe it has become an extension of yourself and your family. Everyone has been involved and the children have earned their first wages there. It truly is like an old friend.

Maybe you have worked so hard, but your business is only marginally successful and you just want to get out. Or you went into the business with a quick, short-term goal intending to sell your business at the first good offer. Whatever the reason you want to sell a business it is a big decision in your life. Once you sell a business, it is gone - no longer there. Once you sign those transfer of ownership papers there is no going back. Make sure you are making the right decision when you sell a business. Price your business at its market value. Remember all the years of effort you have poured into it - when you sell a business it is the single opportunity you have to get the price right. You deserve the rewards for the years of hard work and sacrifice; and to move on into the

future worry free.

Everything will be a lot easier if you hire a commercial broker to help you through what it takes to sell a business successfully. The following are some things you should research before you decide to sell a business:

- Where to start? When is the best time to sell your business? Is it seasonal and may attract more buyers during the busiest time? What do you need to know about the legalities and pitfalls of selling a business? How do you choose the professionals you need to advise and help you sell your business? - How do you set a Price? How do you know what your business is worth in the marketplace? What can you do to maximize the value of the business before you sell? Is everything in order - the books, the property, future profit and loss projections? Seek professional advice before you sell a business. - Where are the Buyers? What does a commercial broker do to help you sell a business? How do you want your business marketed? How do you create a memorandum of sale? - How to Structure the Sale? What are your options? What are the tax implications of each one? - Now it is Sold? What happens now you have accepted an offer? What are the steps? What is the process for a letter of offer, due diligence and handover?

Your decision is made to sell your business, your research is done, and now you need to find someone to guide you through the process. Do not make spur of the moment decisions. Be careful who you choose when you sell a business. You need confidence in the company or individual broker you choose to guide you through the sale.

Selasa, 29 Juli 2008

5 Tips To See Your Website In Top Position

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, it means optimizing ones website in such way that the search engine will deem its contents more relevant than other websites towards a particular keywords searched by users. It demonstrates the links from other websites & analyzes the keywords to fit properly in a page that complement to each other in order to getting top ranking position.

There are following 5 tips which can help you to get your website ranked on the top position:-

Domain Name: Registration of a domain name is the first step one takes towards having a website. When you start thinking of having a website for your business, you must understand the importance of SEO from that stage only. Many people take domain names related to their corporate identity and others prefer to have shorter domain names. Search Engine give a lot of importance to domain names, hence you should include the main keyword in your domain name. For example, if you sell flowers in india and your company name is ABC florist private limited, I suggest you to take a domain like abcflowersindia.com. Or abcfloristindia.com. You can go for other TLDs as well if .com is not available.

Make your website Content Rich: While designing your website, most people focus more on graphics and animation and lesser on content. You can hire a content writer or if you can do it at your own, make your website content rich. As search engines are content hungry and also more content mean more number of keywords. Try to use text instead of images where ever possible and also use ALT tags for your images and give considerable importance to naming of your webpages, images and folders. You should name them including your keywords. For example, if there is a image of Tulip, instead giving it a name like a1.jpg, name it tulip.jpg, similarly your webpages names should include the keywords instead abc.html or a1.html etc.

Also organize your website into different pages avoid stuffing all the keywords and phrases into one page. Also attempt to avoid the use of tables, flash, frames & java script & commented text in your webpage.

Meta Tags: Meta tags are also an important section of your web pages, they describe what the web page is all about. Be very careful while defining them. Leaving them empty or keyword stuffing both is harmful for your webpages. Following are most important meta tags -

Title Tag : Instead of having a title like welcome to ABC Florist Pvt. Ltd., you should have title like Send Flowers to India, New Delhi, Mumbai, Banglore. Try to include your main keywords within your title tag. Description: Description tag is the text which is displayed under the title on result page. Write here a nice description of your webpage, so that a user can have an idea about your website while searching it in the search engines.

Keywords: keyword Meta tag is very important but be very careful while defining them. Keywords should be relevant to the webpage and there should not keyword stuffing in the webpage.

Create a site map: It improves the efficiency of the web pages by searching its content easily. It provides relevant result by getting their index quickly. It helps in navigation of all pages includes in the website. With the help of site map search bots can easily crawl link pages. Also generate a google and yahoo site maps and submit them.

Increase your Links: Link popularity is measured by both the quantity and quality of sites that link to your website. The ranking of your website is based on the quality of links. Once your site is complete and running, Focus on getting links from other websites. You can easily generated links using the following :- a) Directory submission: It Increases in the link popularity. It is fast and affordable way to get one-way links. b) Article submission is a powerful method to gaining quality one way incoming links to your website. c) Blogging �" is also good way to popularize your website and getting back links. d) Social book marking: It is a method to store, manage, search, and organize bookmarks of web page on the internet with the help of metadata. e) Reciprocal link building: Exchange links with the theme based website. It help you increasing your PR and back links.Make sure that the site you are exchanging has good ranking area & major search engines.

Senin, 28 Juli 2008

Why Are Customer Testimonials So Effective?

Some marketing pitches are so over-loaded with testimonials from "satisfied customers," one wonders if the business is really that good, or if the owner has a long list of friends and family members who are willing to say nice things about the company.

In fact, most testimonials do create a favorable impression -- that's why we use them! The question is: why are they so effective? A recent article in Scientific American gives us an answer.

"How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results" explains why clients sometimes reject the "facts" you might mention during the course of a consultation and instead adhere to unscientific, subjective stories they have heard or experienced, such as customer testimonials. According to the authors, this tendency to reject factual evidence in favor of personal anecdotes has its roots in our primitive survival instincts:

"We have evolved brains that pay attention to anecdotes because false positives (believing there is a connection between A and B when there is not) are usually harmless, whereas false negatives (believing there is no connection between A and B when there is) may take you out of the gene pool. Our brains are belief engines that employ association learning to seek and find patterns. Superstition and belief in magic are millions of years old, whereas science, with its methods of controlling for intervening variables to circumvent false positives, is only a few hundred years old."

In other words, this behavior reflects a primitive survival instinct. That's not likely to change anytime soon.

There are several lessons here. If you are a consultant or coach trying to help a client "get real" about their business or personal circumstances, don't take it personally if the client rejects your factual "evidence." When they balk at letting go of attitudes or beliefs based on personal experiences or stories, they are just being insanely normal!

Second, you can alert your client to this very human behavior. Explain that your information might seem to contradict what the client has come to believe anecdotally. Having this explanation upfront might at least open up the client to considering information that contradicts what the client already "knows" to be true.

The third lesson actually uses this primitive instinct in a positive way.

There's a reason why so many effective marketing programs rely on testimonials to "make a case" for a product or service: they engage our basic human instincts. We tend to pay attention and give high value to stories from other humans. That's just the way most of us are wired.

Even though our rational, logical selves tells us that four or five positive testimonials from satisfied customers are not scientific proof that the service is good for us -- perhaps there are, unknown to us, two hundred dissatisfied customers! -- our primitive emotional side tends to place greater weight on the positive, anecdotal evidence we read in an ad or on a web site.

Although this Scientific American story seems to contradict other studies about the way humans process information -- for example, high-risk, high-involvement decisions often drive consumers to seek factual information before they make a purchase -- it explains a human characteristic that most of us have experienced as coaches and consultants (at least, anecdotally speaking!).

Bottom line: you can use this lesson to help clients come to terms with facts they might otherwise be reluctant to accept. As for all those testimonials on your web site or blog saying what a great business you have -- keep them! Now you know the real reason they are so effective.

Sabtu, 26 Juli 2008

SEO Tactics :Gaining More Traffic Through Internet Marketing

You can always continue revamping your websites in order for them to look as perfect as you want them to be. You can also continue on experimenting and creating the best product the whole of Web World has ever seen. Of course, these will surely draw rave reviews for your site. Have you ever heard of internet marketing SEO, though? Do you think you need to do more of this?

Even as you have the most gorgeous-looking website and the most useful product the world needs to get on living, you still need to become visible. The thing is, if people do not know your website existed, they cannot buy from you. In the wide, wide world of the Web, it is not that easy to achieve traffic as before.

Presently, with millions of websites competing for attention to the users, you need an internet marketing SEO tactic to boost your visibility. Only by consistent and dedicated internet marketing SEO will you attain the traffic that will draw crowds of users into your site.

By knowing some of the popular internet marketing SEO tactics, you can boost your site and gain interesting prospects for your business.

Start considering these internet marketing SEO strategies:

1. Link popularity through search engines - submit you website to major search engines. Once you optimize your pages and are able to rank within the top 10 or 20 sites using a particular keyword, you will get steady targeted traffic, guaranteed.

2. Doing pay-per-click search engines- major SEs offers the chance for you pay for your ranking. If you do not want to be bothered with optimization, pay-per-click is a popular option.

3. Taking advantage of link exchanges - this internet marketing SEO tactic is done by searching for other high-ranking sites related to your site or within your market and request a trade of links.

4. Doing joint ventures with collaborates - partner with other editors or webmasters related to your market and strike an agreement to help promote each other's businesses.

5. Start referral marketing - if you already have customers who came back more than once, encourage them to refer you to other internet users that they know. Introduce an incentive for them like providing discounts or offering a free quality gift. This way, your customers will be attracted to participate in this internet marketing SEO strategy.

6. Start building your own opt-in newsletter - having your own newsletter gets you points for credibility. It will also help you stay in touch with your customers. You can introduce an ad corner and market your own products or services to subscribers. You can also earn extra income from advertising sales.

7. Look up Ezine advertising - for just a few dollars, you can reach thousands of targeted prospects.

8. Doing article submissions - you can write articles depending on your specific area of interest and then submit them editors and webmasters in your market. You can also submit them to free article submission sites for others to reprint them.

There are many other things you can do and liven up your site's traffic. You can network by joining forums or participating in message boards, are listed in major indexes and web site directories, create a free eBook and give it away to visitors and webmasters.

Just remember to be consistent about it. There are many internet marketing SEO strategies. You just have to discover them and start boosting your visibility.

You can always continue revamping your websites in order for them to look as perfect as you want them to be. You can also continue on experimenting and creating the best product the whole of Web World has ever seen. Of course, these will surely draw rave reviews for your site. Have you ever heard of internet marketing SEO, though? Do you think you need to do more of this?